Daniel Yarosh - The Death of Hercules - A DocuNovel

After he married away his two oldest daughters, Clara and Manya, when they each reached 16, Shneer-Solomon made a plan. He had three sons remaining and he was convinced that owning and working land was the only guarantee of security. He had Julius train in bookkeeping and Saul was directed to learn farming and animal husbandry at the gymnasium. Max studied engineering and tool making as an apprentice to a ship building friend. Together they would buy a farm in America. Saul would oversee the planting and the animals, Max would maintain the machinery needed in modern farming, and Julius, the oldest, would watch the money. Shneer-Solomon had no hope that the goyim , the non-Jewish world, would help his sons one bit. But he thought that if they all worked in the same place, together, their fates would be linked in owing the land, and they would have a much better chance in America than selling coal and wheat in Ukraine.

In this dream Shneer-Solomon was not like those who stayed or even the many more who did emigrate. Those who stayed could not overturn their lives and could not think of leaving their homes. Those who came to America had to tear out of themselves the pride of the hearth and the unconditional love of home. They had to say that although my love of my country has been rejected, another will love me still. Shneer-Solomon overturned his life, cut off his seed from his land, and stayed. He wanted for his sons what he could not give to himself. What his sons could not know was what he couldn’t give up. With an emotion he did not admit to anyone, and that he could not explain to himself, Shneer-Solomon would not leave Kherson. He said he was old, and he could not change. Was he more afraid to leave or lose his sons? Ethel cried and cried. “How can you send our sons away?” she wailed. “They’re not married. We’ll never stand under a chupah with them, and never see our grandchildren. How can you do this to our family?”

With a blind faith in his progressive ideals, he did. He made contact with a cousin of a friend, a landsman , in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The day in January 1912 that Julius left they cried with their Mother, hugged her and kissed her while she trembled with tears. The brothers vowed to each other “When we’re settled in America, we’ll bring Mama and Pa out too.” This wistful promise made them all feel better, and they turned their sights West. Julius emigrated on a merchant marine ship leaving Odessa for Portsmouth, England. From there he took a line ship from Liverpool to Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, and arrived in Minneapolis. He took a room on Emerson Avenue on the North Side.

Saul followed in January 1914 and moved in with his brother in a new boarding house on 17th Avenue South, in the Elliot Park section. When the Grand Duke of Austria was assassinated in June 1914, Russia attacked to defend the Serbs. By August Imperial Russian Army forces were driving westward into Hungary. Shneer-Solomon realized the danger of global war and feared that his remaining son would be conscripted now that he had turned 18. By October 1914 Max left for Minnesota with a stack of currency in his coat that his father had saved for their farm.

Minneapolis was perfect for the plan. There was lots of work in the grain mills, apprenticeships in tool shops, an agricultural university, and especially a chance to buy good farmland on the Great Plains. For the brothers, leaving before a war was a blessing, and going to America that vowed neutrality looked like a great adventure.

The Twin Cities had been a destination for Jewish immigration for forty years. The first German immigrants came to St. Paul, the northern-most stop on the steamboat line, and settled in Lowertown in what was then a frontier village. They brought capital and set up successful stores and trading businesses. In the 1880s the railroad came to Minneapolis, and with it came Eastern European Jews, many refugees from the pogroms. They were much poorer than the resident German Jews, spoke Yiddish not German, and received the back-handed charity and condescension from the established community with resentment.

The three brothers moved in together in a larger room on 16th Avenue South. In the beginning of 1915 Julius and Saul enrolled in the University of Minnesota, while Max took an arranged apprenticeship in a tool and dye factory that contracted with the giant grain mills. The neighborhood was quickly filling up with Romanian Jews, a traditionalist clan with a particular and ancient dislike for their eastern neighbors in the Ukraine. The brothers attended the local Romanian synagogue, but without a father in their house they had no standing to meet the eligible girls of the congregation. They were viewed suspiciously by the neighbors as a brotherhood of agitators, maybe Zionists or Bolsheviks.

With little to distract them, they each concentrated on their missions, but the shock of a new culture and the isolation from the community wore on them. Julius, the oldest, was most acutely aware of what he had lost. He dreamed of the secure days of grammar school, helping his father on the docks and skipping down familiar streets. Now he studied accounting in a giant university with elbows out competition for grades. Saul was enthralled with the new technology in farming and the advanced understanding of crop management. Yields were growing, and less manpower was needed for a solvent enterprise. While this meant many farmers sons left the land, it also meant a small family could use modern techniques and survive. But he was realistic. There were almost no Jewish farmers in Minnesota. They faced discrimination from lending banks, the selling landowners, and the dairy cooperatives. But here was something he could do that was impossible in Kherson, and he was determined to try. Max, the youngest, was too young for nostalgia and was caught up in the excitement of the American dream. New mechanical inventions were revolutionizing communication, daily chores and weekly entertainment. He was the lowest rung at the factory, but he was learning how raw steel became industry and commerce.

Shneer-Solomon had been right about Kherson and the War, but things got worse much faster than anyone expected. The news in America of course was filtered through red-baiting hysterical newspaper publishers and posturing politicians, but it seemed bad. The Tsar had been challenged; weak leaders had taken over. They were stalking horses for the Bolsheviks. This was madness, a country as large and as powerful as Russia in the hands of radicals, of fools, of vicious opportunists. Jews converted to atheists were the worst anti-Semites. There had been no letters from Pa in over a year. It was just like that house in their neighborhood on 16th Avenue, where Max once stood outside and heard the screaming, the cursing and howling, the blows that broke bones, but no one went in or came out. The three brothers felt haunted by the helplessness.

They soon found a way to act. The country moved away from neutrality and America needed an Army. In April 1917 Congress authorized the expedited naturalization of foreign-born men who enlisted in the U.S. military. This now was a fit with The Plan: they would enlist and gain citizenship to help them buy the farm. By late 1917 they were all three inducted into service.

The brothers all set down their beers, and deeply inhaled the relaxed grace of a Sunday afternoon in the Cafe Maroilles. Then Max looked up at Julius and Saul with a dead earnest that surprised them.

“How are we going to get Pa and Mama out?” he said.

Julius was shocked. “What?”

“Now?” Saul was sarcastic. He signaled for another round of beer from the barmaid to stall for time to get this gay reunion back on track.

“Listen, my little brother,” Julius said in that patronizing tone he inherited from Shneer-Solomon, which was meant to sound like reason but was well understood to be the final rule. “This is the worst time. Nobody knows what’s what at home, and we’re haven’t even got our papers yet.” This much was very true. To entice young immigrant men to join the Army, the US government had offered naturalization to all aliens who enlisted, served their time, and were honorably discharged. The boys intended to take up Uncle Sam on that offer. To consider any deviation from honorable discharge would jeopardize this fast-track to citizenship and derail all their plans.